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T-Mobile and Bebo announce social networking partnership

UK’s leading social networking site added to My Social Sites service

  

Key features:

 

 

London, UK “ 18 June 2008: T-Mobile and Intercasting Corporation today announced that they have added leading social networking sites Bebo and Piczo to T-Mobile’s ground-breaking My Social Sites service. UK users can now stay in touch with their favourite social networking sites with just one click. The My Social Sites application also allows users to upload pictures from their mobile phone direct to the sites.

 

My Social Sites is a mobile application that provides users with a single and easy to use interface, which allows social networkers to manage their most important sites in a simple way, direct from their mobile phone. Customers who always want to keep on top of what their friends are up to no longer have to worry about constantly checking their favourite sites for updates. Every time anything new is added, T-Mobile will send a message updating the user. People can then check their messages for free, keeping fully up-to-date whilst on the move.

 

Bebo, is the second most visited social networking site in the UK with over 12 million unique users in the UK, and Piczo will be added to the existing My Social Sites “ Xanga, LiveJournal, BlackPlanet and Vox and mobile community, Rabble.  The technology behind My Social Sites is provided by Intercasting and its award-winning ANTHEM platform. The ANTHEM platform provides social networking category management for T-Mobile through applications, messaging and embedded handset features. Users can add popular new social networking sites as they become available to their mobile devices. 

 

Pauline Lunn, Head of Beyond Voice New Proposition Development at T-Mobile said: More than 800 million people are predicted to use social networks via a mobile phone by 2012, (eMarketer, May 2008). Our customers have told us that they want to stay in touch with their social networks, wherever they are and My Social Sites allows exactly that. By adding Bebo and Piczo to the service we’ve added two of the industry’s most popular sites.

Ziv Navoth, SVP Marketing & Business Development at Bebo, said: "For an emerging generation the internet and social networking sites in particular are the place where they live their lives out online, but until today, logging off from the Internet also meant logging out of their network. My Social Sites will help our users to extend their Bebo experience by allowing them to converse with one another, share their passions, discover new forms of entertainment and express their identities regardless of where they are."

Extending the Piczo experience to mobile devices is the next logical step in Piczo’s progression as a leading social network catering to the self expression of teens worldwide.  With My Social Sites, Piczo members are able to express themselves through photos and stay connected with friends long after they’ve left the comfort of their computer.  Our members asked for it “ with partners like T-Mobile and Intercasting, we were able to  deliver it, Jeremy Verba, CEO of Piczo emphasized in a statement.

 Content creation, communication and managing cost are consistently top on the must-have feature list for mobile social networkers, said Sean Kane, General Manager International at Intercasting Corporation. My Social Sites delivers on all three with a powerful mobile experience.

My Social Sites allows users to send replies, add comments or post pictures direct from their mobile phone. It costs just 5p to post a comment, send a message or accept a friend request or 20p to add a photo. Users can also search for friends, browse profiles and check out photos for only 20p for 24 hour access. 

The My Social Sites application can be downloaded, free of charge, by texting SOCIAL to 49014 from compatible mobile phones. More information can be found here:  http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/mobile-messaging/social-sites/

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Contacts:

T-Mobile Press Line                                                           +44 (0) 7017 150 150

Brands2Life                                                                         +44 (0) 207 592 1200

 

About T-Mobile UK

 

T-Mobile is one of the world’s largest mobile operators with more than 123 million customers worldwide and is the service provider of choice for 17.1 million customers in the UK, making it one of the largest networks. T-Mobile has a range of innovative products and services, such as Solo, the SIM only option offering market-leading minutes and texts (at £30 per month) on a 30-day rolling contract; Combi, our best package deal Flext, a unique tariff with a flexible allowance; U-Fix, a tariff that combines pay-as-you-go and a minimum term contract, and web'n'walk, which enables customers to surf the internet on the move. Competitive high-speed Mobile Broadband tariffs include access to the largest worldwide Wi-Fi network, with more than 1,000 HotSpots in convenient locations in the UK and 27,000 worldwide. Network coverage is among the best in the UK at over 99 per cent of the UK population. T-Mobile operates an advanced 3G HSDPA-enabled network capable of supporting mobile broadband speeds of up 3.6mb per second, rising to 7.2 in the summer of 2008.

 

For more information about T-Mobile UK, please visit www.t-mobile.co.uk

 

About Intercasting

 

San Diego-based Intercasting, a leading mobile social networking company, partners with wireless carriers, social networking companies and major brands & entertainment companies across the globe to drive the growth of personalized mobile media through ANTHEMβ„’, its award winning platform. Founded in 2004, Intercasting was the first company to deploy a carrier-grade mobile blogging and social networking application in North America with Rabble. Mobile carriers, brands and social networking sites interested in partnering with Intercasting please email anthem@intercastingcorp.com.

 

 

About Bebo

 

Bebo is the world's leading global social media network. Building on the notion of traditional social networking websites, Bebo combines community, self-expression and entertainment to enable its users to consume, create, discover and share professional and user-generated content through the Bebo website. Bebo has over 12m unique users in the UK and a total membership of more than 42 million worldwide. Bebo's worldwide users spend an average of 30 minutes a day on the site.

 

Bebo forms part of AOL's newly created People Networks business unit which combines Bebo, the AIM and ICQ personal communications network, widget technology company Goowy Media and social search and answer service Yedda. People Networks' collection of community platforms reach 80 million unduplicated users worldwide.

 

Bebo is a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL LLC, a majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX).

 

* Source for metrics data in this release: comScore Media Metrix, April 2008, except for the Bebo user number, which is internal.

 

About Piczo, Inc.

Piczo empowers teenagers worldwide to express themselves creatively, build personal communities, and share ideas and experiences with their friends in a safer online environment. Piczo’s customizable content, colourful graphics, glitter text, video, music, and photo editing tools spotlight member creativity without requiring technical knowledge of any kind.  Piczo has over 30 million registered user accounts. According  to comScore Media Metrix, Piczo had over 8.9 million Monthly Unique Visitors and generated over one billion monthly page views in April 2008.  Piczo has offices in San Francisco and London.